18 Oct 11 Finding needles in a haystack… CI and information explosion

The information explosion has played havoc with people’s schedules. One estimate puts the annual economic loss due to information overload at $900 billion (globally).

While drowning in information, they are starved of usable knowledge. If organizations miss market signals, they risk being outwitted by their competitors. However, it is impossible (and inefficient) for them to sift through every nugget of information out there.

How can people and organizations manage the enormous quantities of inputs coming at them?
Many organizations use tools to reduce the quantity of information that they need to process. There are databases, news alerts, page tracking software, and many more. Some are free and some are subscription based.

Tools can only be effective if you feed them with the right instructions and inputs. If instructions are not precise, the tools will throw up inappropriate or suboptimal results.

So how does an organization come up with the right set of instructions for the information filters, so that only the relevant parts come up for processing?

The key lies in clearly understanding your company’s objectives and the various factors that influence the achievement of these objectives. The organization must then translate the company’s objectives into instructions for information tools and information gatherers.

ValueNotes and Dow Jones are hosting an executive briefing in Mumbai on 20th October, where senior strategy, planning and marketing executives will discuss these issues and share their experiences with competitive intelligence and information overload.

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Varsha Chitale

Varsha led the competitive intelligence practice at ValueNotes. As part of her drive to educate India Inc. on the merits of competitive intelligence, she often conducted webinars and seminars on CI for senior executives of Indian companies.